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The Real Feminist Nightmare

It’s definitely not Michelle Obama.

By KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER

November 25, 2013

Childhood obesity is another area of the first lady’s work that has significantly more substance than the “home-grown vegetable” image the “Leaning Out” article presents. Nearly one in three children, which is more than 23 million adolescents and children in the United States total, are either obese or overweight, placing them at increased risk for serious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke. Lower income communities are particularly at risk.

This is a public health emergency that millions of mothers across the nation care about deeply.

In this policy area, reports show that the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative is successfully fighting childhood obesity on many fronts. Not only has the initiative helped lead to more healthful school lunches and food; it also has increased the number of schools that are meeting the HealthierUS Schools challenge in nutrition and fitness (3,300 schools met the standard in 2012, with more coming on board); worked with grocers to build or expand 1,500 stores in communities with limited access to healthful food (reaching more than 9 million people and creating thousands of jobs); educated and engaged childcare professionals and organizations in the implementation of new criteria for nutrition and physical activity; successfully worked with restaurants, hotels and corporations like Disney to improve nutrition quality and address food marketing toward kids; made salad bars available to more than 700,000 kids in schools; helped make nutrition guidelines clear to parents; worked with the Department of Defense to improve food nutrition for those who serve our country; and more.

This work is having a cumulative impact with positive results. A recent study found that the childhood obesity rates have dropped in 18 states.

“The first lady has very effectively used her bully pulpit to put children’s health front and center. People in communities all over the country have responded to her call to take child health seriously and we’re already seeing results. When children are healthier, the benefits ripple out to whole communities,” noted Lori Dorfman, director of Berkeley Media Studies Group, part of the Public Health Institute.

Is the first lady perfect? Of course not. No one person could take on all that needs to be done in our nation; nor will everyone be satisfied with her priorities.

Is the first lady being unfairly judged? Absolutely. We live in a nation that so deeply devalues caregiving and motherhood that embracing motherhood is being used as an excuse to accuse the first lady of treason against the feminist movement.

Motherhood is also too often used as a wedge between women. While only 9 percent of women make more than $75,000 per year, the mothers who are in that top 9 percent often have the most life choices due to their relatively high economic status, and those mothers often get the most criticism and attention in the mainstream media. As author Joan Blades notes, “When mothers choose to ‘lean in’ to high pressure jobs that entail working long hours, they often have guilt heaped upon them for supposedly neglecting their children. And when some choose to adjust their careers to have more family and personal time, they’re often accused of betraying feminism. It’s damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

Kirstin Larson, a Seattle mom, has this to add: “As a corporate executive-turned-mom-in-chief of my own household, I’ve grown weary of every woman’s life choices being judged using the lean in/lean out litmus test. Would it be more acceptable for the first lady to be mom-in-chief or to work on childhood obesity if she was less well-educated? If she had not had a successful career? She chooses to support her family, country, and community in a hands-on way. She should be thanked, not judged.”

Larson concludes, “I thought the point of feminism was to rally against prescribed roles for women and to gain enough economic and societal equality to define our own paths.”

There are deep complexities with motherhood itself in our nation. Joya Misra, professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts, shares findings from recent research: “When black women appear to step back from the workplace they are excoriated and when White women step back they are celebrated. Michelle Obama is negotiating extremely tricky terrain and the ‘Leaning Out’ piece belittled her work in ways that were extremely inappropriate.”

Given this complex reality, in which there is also heightened wage and hiring discrimination against all moms and the work of caring is greatly undervalued, it’s not so very surprising that a woman, in this case the first lady, who frames her contributions within the tricky terrain of motherhood is discounted.

One thing is clear: First Lady Michelle Obama is not the feminist nightmare. The real feminist nightmare is that motherhood is now a greater predictor of inequality than gender, and we have yet to shine a bright enough light on this type of discrimination to address its rippling impacts.

The real feminist nightmare is that women like the first lady are attacked due to their work on policies that are important to mothers everywhere, just because those policies are priorities for moms.

The real feminist challenge is that so much more needs to be done by all of us to achieve equality and family economic security.

Motherhood is the unfinished business of the contemporary feminist movement.

Feminism is for mothers too.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is executive director and co-founder of MomsRising.org, a grassroots organization working for family economic security and to end discrimination against women and moms.